The
material presented in the linked articles does not necessarily reflect the
views or opinions of the editors. Research on your own and if you can validate
any of the articles, or if you discover deception and/or an obvious agenda,
we will appreciate if you drop us a line! We often post such comments along
with the article synopses for the benefit of other readers. As always, Caveat
Lector!

It's just not fair. We have been discussing UFO's and strange
multi-dimensional interactions for years, and received the prerequisite
flak for doing so. Now the mainstream media decides to get into
the action and hardly an eyebrow is raised in response.

What is going on?! Just a year ago, anyone that even hinted at
the idea that ETs were real was immediately consigned to the lunatic
fringe. Now, overnight, as if by magic, scientists are "preparing
the world for first contact". Taking the reality of ETs for granted
(since we feel like doing so today and retain the right to retract),
we have long wondered just how the powers that be might go about
making the world aware of the reality of "space brothers".

We decided that it would have to be a long drawn out process
of acclimatisation, given that they have for so long maintained
that we are alone in this vast universe. Never once did we think
that our governments and scientists would have the audacity to
just come out with it, from one day to the next. Yet that is exactly
what they seem to be doing, and the sleeping public will no doubt
accept every word they say as truth. In light of this fact, we
are beginning to think that we should have copyrighted some of
the crazier ideas we came up with, because no doubt we will soon
be seeing them splashed across the world's media outlets. We say
it again, "no fair!"

The U.S. and other world governments already have detailed secret
plans for first contact.

BY JIM WILSON
Popular Mechanics
February 2004

Within the scientific community,
the question is no longer whether extraterrestrial life exists,
but if ET is smart enough to do long division. [...]

Governments and international organizations around the world
have taken notice of the changing odds. No governmental official
has gone on record claiming that UFOs are real, let alone a threat.
Yet with little public fanfare, they have begun preparing for
the single most important event in human history: first contact.
That is, the moment earthlings discover incontrovertible proof
that they are not alone.

Whatever. Regular readers, and those who have done their homework
know that such interactions have been going on for years, and
not for our benefit.

[...] Unless ET materializes from another dimension in the middle
of the Super Bowl, humans most likely will have some advance warning
of its arrival. How much time we get to straighten up for extraterrestrial
company depends upon who spots ET first. [...]

A side bar on this article mentions that, "The International
Academy of Astronautics in Paris maintains a list of volunteers
willing to help world governments if ET arrives," and then proceeds
to give us the names on the list!

The broad-brush outline for Earth's response to the first alien
encounter is set out in an international agreement called the
"Declaration of Principles Concerning Activities Following the
Detection of Extraterrestrial Intelligence." Written by a committee
of scientists organized by the SETI Institute, the declaration
spells out what astronomers should do, and what they should
avoid doing, immediately after first contact.

Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the agreement
is that astronomers who sign on to the declaration agree to
keep the news of an imminent contact under their hat until the
astronomy community and authorities have been notified.
[...]

The rest of the article goes on about their "secret" plans,
including poking and prodding on Plum Island. Just yesterday we
posted an interesting article with the following commentary:

[...] Why the cover-up of extraterrestrial
visitation? Could there be a more valid reason than fear and greed
among the powers that be? Has popular entertainment been used to
prepare us? [...]

Commen: A
good article that asks some good questions, even if it begins
by talking about Dr. Steven Greer of the Disclosure Project. From
our research, Greer's work appears to be yet another COINTELPRO
style campaign. Which is not to say that some useful information
can't be separated from the disinfo. For an interesting perspective
on Greer read Dr. Jean-Pierre Petit's commentary: Disclosure:
Anatomie d'une Désinformation. (In French and English)

There you have it. The media has been talking about this stuff
more and more frequently. We are clearly being set up for some
sort of disclosure. Something so shocking that it will rock the
status quo to the very core. Perhaps it sounds crazy. For those
who are in search of objective reality, this hypothesis has to
be at least entertained.

Warning: Researchers who begin digging into this topic with an
open mind, and who are not a part of some COINTELPRO
disinformation campaign, come away convinced that something sinister
has been afoot for hundreds of years. More on this at a later
time. Also of interest: A
Cosmic Outrage: NASA's Baffling but Deliberate Self-Sabotage.
We can't say how accurate this story is at this time, since there
are too many variables we have not personally examined.

It appears also that the Anglican Church has not been as honest
about their "faith" as they might have been. Allegedly,
a survey was carried out where 200 Anglican Priests were asked
to recite all ten commandments, only 69 were able to do so. In
contrast 100 of the same 200 priests confirmed that they believed
in "Space Aliens". But then again, are we surprised? Even the
bible claims that YHWH at least once made an appearance in a fire
and smoke spewing UFO-like device.

US and Russian space officials
say the crew on board the International Space Station has reported
an unidentified object outside the orbiting craft.

A NASA representative in Russia says American astronaut Michael
Foale and his Russian colleague, Alexander Kaleri, last week observed
what they described as a 20 centimetre long strip of soft material
which was floating in space.

The representative says it is still unclear what the object was.

He says US and Russian experts are studying photos sent by the
crew to determine its origin but insist it posed no danger to
the station.

Russian experts say it could have been a piece of the station's
insulation, or a strip used to attach some technical equipment
to the outside of the station. [...]

Comment: Maybe
it was YHWH in his beat up old spaceship on his way back to liberate
his people?

Strange things have been happening
lately. Global warming is about to cause a massive new Ice Age,
George Bush is looking more and more like a one-term president
and al Qaeda says it now has nuclear capability.

While we have all the money in the world to spend on the military
and on security, the United States can't spend one dime to implement
the Kyoto protocols, which would at least give us a chance at
stemming the upcoming disasters.

At the same time, UFOs are being sighted at all-time levels,
our Mars rovers keep sending back strange images and alien abductions
appear to be on the rise as well.

It may well be time to break out the tinfoil hats and start stocking
up on food and water, as the Apocalypse appears to be nigh.

In Canada, the environmental minister is warning that global
warming is a bigger long-term threat than terrorism because climate
changes will cause the relocation of millions of people and leave
North American agriculture in ruins.

"Terrorism is unlikely to give us the strong possibility
of 500 million refugees," said the minister, David Anderson.
"Climate change is likely to give us that if it goes unchecked."

While we have all the money in the world to spend on the military
and on security, the United States can't spend one dime to implement
the Kyoto protocols, which would at least give us a chance at
stemming the upcoming disasters.

It's a bizarre time to be alive. While every generation likes
to boast that the end is near, in this case the predictions may
actually be true. We may just be a year or two away from a near-total
economic collapse in America, resulting in massive rioting in
our cities.

And the reason the UFOs appear to be showing up in record numbers
is because aliens apparently like to watch the action, in the
same way I used to watch the goings-on in my ant farm.

My eyes have been opened to all of these possibilities thanks
to the great Art Bell, the radio talk-show host who explores these
things on Saturday and Sunday nights.

In fact, the other night, I called into his show after a very
bizarre event happened in my own life.

I'd come home from work on a Monday feeling dog-tired. I got
home, took a shower, shaved, gave food and water to my cats and
laid down for a nap around 5:30 p.m. I slept for what felt like
hours, having very vivid dreams.

When I woke up, most of the cats' food and water had been consumed.
When I walked into the bathroom, I had the beginning of a 5 o'clock
shadow. I felt totally refreshed from my nap.

But when I looked down at my watch, it was only 6:30 p.m. Obviously,
there'd been some sort of time manipulation at work.

So when I asked Bell about my situation, he told me that I'd
been the victim of what is called a "time slip." It
apparently happens pretty frequently and its cause is unknown.
Some have said that it is connected with the abduction phenomena,
while others see it as only a time-space anomaly.

Either way, it was bizarre. [...]

Now, do I really believe in alien abductions, UFOs and the forthcoming
apocalypse? Not necessarily. What I do know is that there are
many things which science cannot adequately explain and which
the U.S. government has been covering up for decades.

If there are no UFOs, then why haven't the records from the 1947
Roswell crash ever been released? Why have a succession of presidential
candidates promised to open up all the UFO-related files and then
reneged?

I remember enough from my physics class that any extraterrestrial
pilot would have to be traveling at faster than light speed to
even come close to bridging the considerable distance between
earth and any other life-bearing entity.

The nearest star, Alpha Centauri, is about four light years away
from us. That's approximately 24 trillion miles. It would take
tens of thousands of years for us to get there if we traveled
at the fastest rate possible today. So the possibility of these
abductions all being real seems small.

But, as I said above, these are bizarre times. I'm not ready
to completely discount anything in this realm.

There are individuals who've claimed to be the victims of alien
implants. Doctors have removed objects from them that appear to
be comprised of materials previously unknown to us.

If there are indeed extraterrestrials roaming around our planet,
I wouldn't be so sure their intentions are good. If they've expended
all this effort to reach us, I'm relatively sure that they want
something more than just to observe us.

And, according to some who've studied the issue, a very high
percentage of humans today are actually a hybrid of human and
alien. Maybe the level is as high as 40 percent.

Who am I to say none of this is true? While it's pretty ridiculous
on its face to believe in any of this, I'm keeping an open mind.

And I'm keeping my tinfoil hat at the ready.

Comment: A good
article, although we would be hesitant to trust much of what comes
from Art Bell's shows. It appears that very little discernment goes
on in determining who gets air time and who doesn't. Although, it
is really up to each individual to use their own critical skills
and not trust something just because it comes from a position of
authority. The author tentatively makes an excellent point that
very likely all these upheavals are connected: political, social,
dimensional, Fortean...

On January 14, Lindsay [...]
noticed something odd. A security camera trained on a couple of
the plant's boiler stacks happened to capture an object moving
across the sky .

"I saw a long, black object, and I could see flames starting
at its nose and going up both sides of it," Lindsay tells the
Strip.
Lindsay wasn't sure what he was seeing, so the 52-year-old did
what he figured was the responsible thing -- he made a videotape
of the flight and alerted the media .

He had better luck with KMBC Channel 9 , which aired Lindsay's
tape and called NORAD (the North American Aerospace Defense Command),
only to find that the U.S. military claimed not to know anything
about a re-entering piece of space junk over Kansas City. The
ABC station also consulted an astronomer, who said the
object was probably a large meteor. [...]

Comment:
A large flaming meteor is more interesting than a UFO, particularly
since those sightings
have greatly increased. UFO reports still beat out fireball
reports in terms of quantity.

WINNIPEG, Manitoba -- Vancouver
and Toronto topped the list of Canadian cities with sightings
of unidentified flying objects, according to an annual report.

According to the 2003 Canadian UFO Survey released Tuesday by
Ufology Research of Manitoba, there were 673 UFO sightings across
Canada last year, 39 percent more than in 2002. Of the sightings
reported last year, 41 were in Vancouver and 34 in Toronto.

"It's still puzzling why we're seeing an increase," survey author
Chris Rutkowski said. "It could be that more people are willing
to admit they've seen a UFO because they see other people admitting
it. The ridicule barrier is almost completely eliminated."

Of the total sightings, 17 percent remain unexplained.

"We have enough information to judge that the other objects were
a star or an aircraft," Rutkowski said.

John Stewart doesn't believe
in aliens but he would like an explanation for the saucer-like
object he saw in the sky last summer. The Stony Mountain resident,
along with his wife and 11-year-old son, reported seeing the unidentified
flying object on Aug. 23 while driving into Winnipeg.

"It was the freakiest thing I've ever seen in my life," said
Stewart, who works for a local recording company. "It was absolutely
amazing to see and the more I think about it, the more I wish
I could see it again."

Stewart's sighting was one of 25 reported in the province last
year, according to the 2003 Canadian UFO Survey. The survey was
released yesterday by an independent research group led by Winnipegger
Chris Rutkowski.

Stewart said the saucer caught his eye while driving past a farmer's
field on Highway 7 about 6:45 p.m. that day. He initially assumed
it was a small airplane or helicopter, hovering 30 to 40 metres
above the ground, but he realized it was much more than that after
the object flew over the highway median and turned sideways as
it passed cars at speeds of up to 140 km/h.

"Me and my wife looked at each other and said 'What the hell
is that?' " Stewart recalled yesterday. "It wasn't aerodynamic
at all, so it shouldn't have been able to have been flying, let
alone flying while going that fast."

The object was pewter in colour and had a diameter of about three
metres, he said, with black and symmetrical, ball-like windows
along the side. After it flew over Stewart's truck, the family
lost sight of the UFO only 90 seconds after first spotting it.

"I have no idea what it was," he said. "If I believed in aliens
I'd have thought it was a probe of some sort but I don't know
about that."

DRAWINGS SIMILAR

At Rutkowski's urging, all three family members drew a picture
of what they saw. All three drawings were strikingly similar,
said Stewart.

He said he wouldn't have come forward if he had spotted the object
while alone, saying there is a stigma attached to people who report
such sightings. Even his friends were skeptical when he told them
about it.

"Nobody believed me until my wife said she saw it, too," he said.
"So they now believe we saw something."

Stewart's sighting was one of 115 in Canada last year that have
no apparent explanation, said Rutkowski. [...]

A CITY pensioner is hoping someone
can shed light on a gigantic flash across the sky over his house
which caused his radio to lose its channels.

John Reynolds, who lives in St John's with his wife Margaret,
said he was stunned by the phenomenon, which happened at around
10pm on Wednesday evening.

"I was putting milk bottles out for the next morning, and I saw
the whole sky light up like a gigantic explosion," said the 63-year-old.

"I thought it was a bomb because it was so vivid, I've never
seen anything like it before.

"It lit up into a yellow colour like a sheet of lightning, but
it was so white that I thought it wasn't lightning.

"When I came back in the house my CD and radio player was going
berserk, and we have now lost every channel on the radio."

Mr Reynolds, who works as a printing agent, said he saw a friend
the following day who had a similar experience at his St John's
home.

"He was in the shower at 10pm the same night and the water went
off for a few seconds," said the father of two.

"This man's central heating had a clock, which has now gone wrong."

Thunder

Worcester police said they had not had any calls reporting unusual
lights over St John's.

Evening News weatherman, Paul Damari said there was no thunder
and lightning in the area at the time.

"No-one has reported anything unusual to me," he said.

Michael Soper, spokesman for Contact International, which collects
and analyses data on UFO and crop circle reports, said he had
no idea what could have caused the gigantic flash, and did not
class the incident as a UFO sighting.

"If there had been several flashes I would have wondered if it
was a covert signalling system," he said.

[...] I saw a low flying Florescent
tube, about 1⁄2 to 1 mile away from me in northern California,
in a little town called Middletown which is approximately 100
miles north of San Francisco. I have a degree in EE and am definitely
not a nut or prone to hallucinations! It was very brightly glowing
mostly white/with a slight tinge of lime.

It appeared to be approx 60 to 80 ft long and about 20 ft. wide.
I have never seen a UFO before, but this was definitely a strange
sight. No noise at all, but there was a very thin almost an invisible
vapor trail behind it and it was moving about 60 mph. I observed
it for about 30 seconds when I looked down for 5 seconds to move
my car completely off the road, all that remained was the thin
vapor like trail which actually stopped at the last place I saw
this light. I would surmise that it just disappeared or stopped
leaving a trail.[...]

Commen: This
weeks Filer's
Files has all kinds of strange sightings, with this appropriate
note "CAUTION, MOST OF THESE ARE INITIAL REPORTS AND REQUIRE FURTHER
INVESTIGATION."

[...] Roswell, New Mexico, is
considered by many to be the "mothership" of alien adventure;
one of the most famous UFO "crashes" occurred here in 1947. Since
then a whole culture of alien-awareness has grown. But the city
hardly holds a monopoly on extraterrestrial excitement. In fact,
there are several alternatives to this mainstream alien hot spot.

One of them is Dreamy Draw, a recreation area near Phoenix, Arizona.
As the story goes, a UFO crashed there in 1947, just three months
after the Roswell incident. The remains of two 4-1/2-foot passengers
were reportedly taken from the crash site and kept in a local's
freezer until the military took them away. True believers say
that shortly after the crash, the Army Corps of Engineers built
a dam at the site to cover up the evidence. According to the city
of Phoenix, the dam wasn't built until 1973. Decide for yourself.

If you'd like the opportunity to see a UFO, head out to the "UFO
Watchtower" in Hooper, Colorado. Judy Messoline, a former cattle
rancher, opened the observatory in 2000. Since then, she has played
host to thousands of visitors and claims to have documented numerous
sightings.

A cemetery in Aurora, Texas, supposedly features an alien pilot's
burial site. A nearby state historical marker tells the legend
of a spacecraft that crashed there in 1897. However, the exact
location of the pilot's grave is unknown. If you can't make it
out to the cemetery, rent "Aurora Encounter," about the alien's
visit.

Aliens must like Wisconsin. It's home to three UFO "Capitals
of the World." First there's Dundee, where every summer believers
and nonbelievers alike gather to celebrate extraterrestrial visitations.
They call it UFO Daze. Coincidentally, several UFOs have been
reportedly sighted on nearby Highway 67.

Wisconsin's second "UFO Capital of the World" is Elmwood. UFOs
allegedly started visiting the area in the mid-70s. Since then,
residents claim to have seen anywhere from 30 to 50 strange-looking
objects in the sky. Every year the town holds a festival that
includes a group "UFO Watch."

And then there's Belleville, which holds its annual UFO celebration
the last Saturday in October. [...]

This amazing photograph snapped
over Plymouth is being called one of the best pictures of a UFO
ever taken.

A city-based amateur photographer captured this image when he
was trying out his new hi-tech digital camera at night. It shows
what can only be described as an 'unidentified flying object'
hovering above St Budeaux.

Another, equally stunning, snap shows the same brightly-illuminated
object tilted at a different angle.

UFO experts are highly excited by the pictures and the Royal
Navy today asked the Herald to supply them with the photos - because
they want to study them.

Plymouth-based UFOlogist Bob Boyd has called the snaps among
the 'best five' pictures of a UFO he has ever seen - in 25 years
of spotting the phenomena. Mr Boyd, chairman of the Plymouth UFO
Research Group, said: "It's the real thing."
He claimed the picture had been examined by a photographic expert
who confirmed it was genuine.

The man who took the photograph, a dockyard worker living in
St Budeaux, didn't realise what he had snapped until he got home
and inspected his pictures.

A Plymouth City Airport spokesman said it was 'highly unlikely'
it was a commercial flight. Mr Boyd does not know of anybody else
reporting the UFO, but said: "That doesn't mean nobody saw it."

Comment:
The reproduction of the photo at the above link is not anything
to write home about. We will keep an eye out to see if any further
photographic evidence is released for this case. If anyone spots
it before we do, be sure to let us know. This
link to the new Filer's report has so many UFO reports for
the latter half of January, that it is nearly overwhelming. Either
people are seeing something, or there is a world wide UFO spotting
disease. Something is going on around our little planet.

Comment:
We include this Pravda article as an another example of the increasing
number of stories attempting to bring the idea of an alien presence
to the mainstream. We have our doubts regarding the truth of this
story, despite the pictorial evidence.

These
startling images of a UFO hovering above the streets of St Budeaux
were captured by an amateur photographer. The man, who wishes
to remain anonymous, was trying a new digital camera by taking
shots at night. It wasn't until he got home and inspected his
pictures that he spotted the illuminated object. [...]

The Royal Navy has asked the Herald to send it the pictures -
so they can be studied by experts.

A spokesman said the navy had Lynx and Sea King helicopters in
the air that night, but could not reveal their whereabouts. [...]

More than 50 people attended the event, which featured two documentaries
and a question-and-answer session with two doctors who believe
that extraterrestrial life exists in some form.

Schwartz, the director of the UA's Human Energy Systems Lab,
said, "Our lab works in controversial areas, but the topic
tonight is extremely controversial."

Dr. Lynne Kitei, a cardiologist from Phoenix, recounted her numerous
UFO sightings and showed the audience a documentary featuring
her home video of the phenomena, titled "The Phoenix Lights."

Kitei had her first UFO sighting in 1995. She was taking a bath
when her husband started screaming to her from their bedroom to
come see the unusual lights that were "hovering" outside
the window.

Kitei described the lights as "three amber orbs, each about
3 to 6 feet in diameter, about 50 to 75 feet above us, hovering
in a triangular formation."

She took video and still photos of the lights as they "dimmed
away."

Two years later, on March 13, 1997, Kitei said a mass UFO sighting
occurred in Phoenix and throughout Arizona. Up to 10,000 people
saw the orbs of light that Kitei described as they waited to see
the Hale-Bopp comet.

Panic ensued as people called the police departments and fire
departments. No one knew what caused the unusual lights that some
described as being attached to some sort of ship that was said
to be more than a mile long, she said.

Kitei called Luke Air Force base and could not obtain any information.
She contacted the Phoenix Sky Harbor airport, where one air traffic
controller and one commercial pilot reported seeing the lights.
Nothing showed up on the radar.

The mystery went unsolved until 2000, when the National Guard
staged an air show to prove to the public that an Air Force maneuver
was behind the mysterious "Phoenix lights." They flew
planes with flares attached to them over the city to "re-enact"
the event.

But the people who had witnessed the real Phoenix lights, including
Kitei, were still skeptical.

Kitei contacted Schwartz, who was reluctant to take on the subject.

"To tell you the truth, I didn't really want to see her,"
he said.

But Schwartz found Kitei's evidence very convincing and said
that she was "alarmingly sane."

[...] Schwartz said we as a culture need to stop denying reliable
data on controversial subjects.

"Shakespeare said, ‘To be or not to be; that is the
question.' But for us, it's, ‘To see or not to see; that
is the question," he said.

"A few insiders know the truth . . . and are studying the bodies
that have been discovered," said Mitchell, who was the sixth man
to walk on the moon.

Mitchell, who landed on the moon with Alan B. Shepard, said a
"cabal" of insiders stopped briefing presidents about extraterrestrials
after President Kennedy.

For those who might consider his statements farfetched, Mitchell,
who has a doctorate in science from the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology, noted that 30 years ago it was accepted that man
was alone in the universe. Few people believe that now, he said.

Small, unidentified low-flying,
slow-moving aircraft have been reported in the area north of the
Scioto County line in the A-plant area. Several ideas about the
purpose of the aircraft have been offered.

Are the aircraft small patrol planes from Homeland Security watching
for Al-Quaida intrusions at the A-plant? Or perhaps the craft
are alien space ships that are flying close to the nuclear plant
to recharge their batteries before zooming off to Mars, Pluto,
Uranus, or other strange and unusual places such as Cleveland,
San Francisco or DisneyWorld.

One sighting was in the area of the Southbound Flea Market on
U.S. 23. Pike County residents said the craft was moving silently
from the direction of the A-plant just at dusk with lights flashing.
Are these aircraft something more sinister than mere interplanetary
cruise ships? Could these aircraft be attack planes carrying weapons
of mass deception? Or are they possibly reconnaisance craft from
an earthly nation? Or, are they merely tourists gathering, practicing
and preparing for a flying visit to busy, vibrant, downtown Portsmouth?

In another sighting it was reported that an aircraft was seen
flying from the direction of Frasure's Lake. Are the craft secretly
harbored in the hills of the wilderness of western Scioto County?
We don't yet have the answers. If sightings continue to be reported
we will ask Doug Deepe to investigate. He is an Air Force flying
veteran; he will find the answer.

Several members of our staff think they have the answer. One
unsteady fellow even offered up the demented idea that the aircraft
are only silent hang-gliders powered by electricity. What do you
think? [...]

Comment:
This location is not so far away from the strange phenomena described
in the Mothman
Prophecies.

[...] Did you ever notice how
oddly UFOs are said to behave by some witnesses? They seem to
act almost... playful. They seem to enjoy playing hide-and-seek
or cat-and-mouse games with people.

Foo fighters , objects seen in the skies over Europe during World
War Two, were said to fly along for a time at the wingtips of
allied aircraft, then turn away and vanish into the sky, much
like dolphins will follow a boat for a time before going off to
do dolphin things. They never showed any aggression.

More recently, UFOs seem to acknowledge the presence of aircraft,
to follow them or to fly alongside them, even seeming to dare
aircraft to chase them at times. A good example is the RB-47 case
of 1957. According to some reports, UFOs seem to sense the presence
of people on the ground and to interact with them at times, to
follow cars, to show themselves and then dart away, even to signal
with light in a few cases.

Are these behaviors what we would expect from an extraterrestrial
craft containing intelligent alien beings? At times it seems to
me that some UFOs might be living beings in themselves, rather
than alien spacecraft.

Some types of UFOs, such as Jose Escamilla's rods , are certainly
presented as living creatures of some kind. "Orbs" and "spooklights",
if they aren't merely a physical phenomenon, seem more to be living
creatures than to be craft containing aliens.

The idea that UFOs might be some sort of living creatures inhabiting
earth's atmosphere rather than nuts-and-bolts craft is not a new
one. Charles Fort seemed to believe something of the sort about
some of the reports that he collected. Kenneth Arnold, the first
"modern" UFO witness, believed later in his life that UFOs were
living creatures. Trevor James Constable is the author of several
books, including The Cosmic Pulse of Life and Sky Creatures, in
which he proposes that UFOs are "Plasmatic inhabitants of our
atmosphere."

A GROUP of children playing
in Littleborough reckon they have had a close encounter with a
UFO.

So vivid was their experience at about 7pm on Thursday they have
started to draw what they saw.

They say the spacecraft hovered slowly just over the rooftops
for several minutes and then shot off at hyper speed.

Lindsey Stansfield, of Timbercliffe, Summit, said her sons, Louis,
aged eight, and Cameron, aged five, were playing with friends
on a trampoline outside their home when they spotted the ‘extra
terrestrial'.

She said: "The children saw the object flying slowly above
the houses. Some of the children thought it was triangular in
shape and others square, but it could have been to do with what
angle they saw it."

"It had red lights around the edge and yellow lights in
the middle. They rushed in to tell us about it, but the time we
got out it had gone. The children say the object had stopped above
the house behind us and then shot off in hyper drive. Later that
evening they started drawing pictures of what they had seen."

"I would like to know if anyone else in Littleborough saw
the object."

Louis said: "I looked up and saw some lights flashing in
the sky. I went in the house to get my mother, but when we went
out it had gone."

A spokesman for the National Air Traffic service said: "There
was no reported alien activity in controlled airspace that we
are aware of."

A spokeswoman for the Ministry of Defence said: "I
am not aware of any other reported sightings. We do have a UFO
report line telephone number so that people can report things
which they cannot explain." [...]

[...] "There are people who
say you shouldn't be teaching this kind of thing in your classrooms,"
says Alan G. Hill, a Delta associate professor of sociology who
has dealt with unexplained phenomenon such as Jeff's close encounters
for decades now. "Some just think it's a waste of money." [...]

Comment: Finally,
maybe we will get through the day without any UFO reports in the
media, assuming the green fireball report above is a natural phenomenon.
We thought our readers would enjoy a short 1973 interview with one
of the great researchers of the strange. If that interview is too
short for you, then also check out The
May Cape Incident.

At its peak, tens of thousands
would await the latest lurid tales of alien autopsies and flying
saucers spying on sleepy market towns.

Yet the publication that took UFOs from the sci-fi hinterland
to the mainstream has now enjoyed its final print run. After almost
25 years, UFO Magazine was quietly shut down last week. Suggestions
of paranormal interference or alien involvement have been ruled
out. The reason is more down-to-earth: not enough people care
these days.

Sources said its closure had been inevitable since the death
of editor and world UFO expert Graham Birdsall last September.
Birdsall along with younger brother Mark founded the Leeds-based
magazine in 1981. Soon it became the world's top UFO publication,
selling up to 35,000 copies at its height. Subscribers still talk
about the puncture marks on sheep carcasses which offered proof
that extra-terrestrial visitors had arrived to suck the juices
of livestock.

Andy Roberts, author of UFO books and former magazine contributor,
said the public's fascination with mysterious flying objects had
faded. [...]

Comment:
Has it faded, or is so much a part of our culture there
is little need for such a specialty magazine? We can hardly go a
day without some report, somewhere, appearing on the internet or
other forms of mass media. New UFO reports have become, dare we
say it, boring, they are so commonplace. The only time they are
interesting are when these reports coincide with other interesting
developments. On the December
17, 2003 Signs page we reported that Malaysia proposed the 'wonderful'
idea of mass circumcision for Muslims as UFOs hovered overhead,
or on the August
15, 2003 Signs page we reported on the curious link between
UFO sightings and blackouts. In other words, these reports become
interesting when examined as part of a larger perspective of the
reality in which we all swim. Richard
M. Dolan rose to this task rather successfully.

Nowadays you have large circulation magazines discussing the
prospects of meeting aliens and what the US government plans to
do when they announce themselves. See When
UFOs Arrive: The U.S. and other world governments
already have detailed secret plans for first contact published
by Popular Mechanics, or the February
11, 2004 Signs Page where we discuss this article.

UFO's have infiltrated the minds of the delusional and the malevolent:

[...] Pat Hutchinson was always talking of Martians, clones and
UFOs. After he shot his wife and the two firefighters and was
still inside the house, Pat told a reporter: "There's only 735
true humans left in Lexington. Less than 3 million left worldwide."
[...]

Comment:
We have the constant
debates about life on Mars, Bush announces more space exploration,
and SETI regularly publishes lame articles about extraterrestrial
contact. From all sides, we are bombarded with the concept of extraterrestrial
life. Even when there are disparaging remarks made, it keeps the
concepts alive, and it seeps into the mass consciousness. It is
already an invasion, and the turf has already been staked out and
won. For what purpose?

It has become a topic that really can't be ignored. But like
everything else, it should be examined with our critical faculties
fully awake. We now have millions, perhaps billions, looking to
the skies for either gods or aliens (will
either party be able to discern the difference?) to save them.
We have millions spending millions of dollars to effect political
outcomes that will please their god.

[...] "Let's go back in time
just a bit," he said, before introducing some television clips
as a way of reminding the audience the story of the Phoenix Lights.

A lot of people were watching the skies that night to see the
Hale-Bopp comet. Instead, dozens reported seeing a V-shaped formation
fly over Phoenix around 8 p.m., roughly following Interstate 17
north to south through town, before disappearing in the southern
sky. Some said the craft was a mile long. Others said they could
see through it and that the lights seemed to move independently
of each other. [...]

Kitei herself didn't see the big "V" fly over Phoenix. But for
years, she had seen a series of lights appear in the southwestern
sky, somewhere in the area of the Barry Goldwater Gunnery Range.
Military pilots routinely drop flares there, and documents showed
they dropped an unusually large number on the night of March 13,
1997. [...]

Kitei described her first sighting, in 1995, of three amber orbs
close to her mountainside home. She placed them in the sky with
her hands as she described how they disappeared in place. "I didn't
put this in the book, because the publisher thought it would be
too much," she said, "but I felt there was an intelligent presence
watching."

The orbs appeared again, more frequently, in 1997. By March of
that year, Kitei said she was videotaping them every night. She
said the lights do appear to act like flares, "but the video does
not do it justice." [...]

Her book mentions that most people who experience an unexplained
phenomenon, like a near-death experience, or an alien abduction,
come away with a sense of tranquility and peace.

"Maybe these phenomenon are touching one person
at a time," she said. "Whatever it takes to wake a person up to
the spiritual beings we are and the goodness we can put forth
during this short time we're on Earth."

One month after the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington,
Kitei said she began to meditate, trying to communicate with whatever
was creating the orbs near the Estrella and South mountains. "Have
you forgotten about us? Do you know what happened down here?"
she asked quietly. It had been awhile since the orbs appeared.
But a few minutes later, she looked out her picture window, and
there they were.

"And it did give me comfort," she said. "For
whatever reason, it did."

Comment: Have
we all become so domesticated that we can no longer look at reality
without flinching, that we will do anything to turn tail into some
illusory reality that all is well? This overwhelming desire for
illusory peace makes us easily exploitable. Apparently those kids
in Iraq, blown away by cluster bombs, just didn't wake up in time
that they were really spiritual beings. How did maintaining a peaceful
outlook in such times of turmoil and suffering become a virtue?
There is no such things as a free lunch in this universe, so how
much are these people paying for their few moments of peace and
spiritual good feelings?

Astronomer Philip Plait is tired
of radio personality Richard Hoagland's claims. He's had enough
of Hoagland's assertions that NASA is covering up evidence of
extraterrestrial life, that the infamous Face on Mars was built
by sentient aliens and, of late, that otherworldly machine parts
are embedded in the red planet's dirt. [...]

AZTEC - Fifty-six years ago
on a small, dirt road north of Aztec, something unexplainable
happened.

A saucer-shaped ship, 100-feet in diameter, was said to have
crash-landed leaving small charred bodies inside. There were eyewitnesses
- military, locals and police officers. There are Air Force
documents one man is working to declassify.

Scott Ramsey of Charlotte, N.C., has spent the past 14 years
of his life researching the purported Aztec UFO crash of 1948.
He has traveled to 28 states, visited numerous military bases
and talked to alleged eyewitnesses of the event.

"We want to be extremely careful to make sure people are
reliable witnesses," Ramsey said of his research. "We
really try not to open our mouth until a lot of research has been
done."

Ramsey will present his findings at the 7th annual Aztec UFO
Symposium Friday through Sunday at Koogler Middle School. His
talk, which he says is "no smoking gun," will be presented
at 11 a.m. Saturday.

The alleged Aztec crash occurred only months after the more famous
1947 Roswell crash of another alleged UFO. It was two years before
the March 17, 1950, Farmington UFO Armada, which celebrates its
54th anniversary today. [...]

AZTEC - A man, who said
there is no Jesus - only alien creators - will speak at the
7th annual Aztec UFO Symposium Saturday.

George Green claims religion is "the biggest problem on
the planet," blinding mankind, so people can no longer think.

"His being here may cause controversy, and I think it will
be good for the symposium," said coordinator Dave Albright,
who invited Green to speak during the Aztec Library's event. "I
don't think he's involved in any cults."

Green claims his contact with UFOs and extraterrestrials began
when he was 19 years old and serving in the Air Force. He said
he saw a silver disc in a hangar at Edward's Air Force Base and
was later shown photos of two dead aliens.

"When the government is ready to tell the story about UFOs
and ETs, it will," Green said.

From his stint in the military, Green went to college and became
involved in real estate development. But his life changed 26 years
ago, when he attended a secret meeting in Aspen, Colo., where
he was asked to be the financier for Jimmy Carter's presidential
campaign. During this meeting, he said he discovered there are
300 families who control the planet.

Some members of these families, who look like humans, are actually
of a "reptilian race," Green said.

Albright said Green is not alone in his thinking about reptilian
aliens controlling the planet. This will just be the first time
this type of thinking